Stop misleading the nation about matric results

Basic education minister Angie Motshekga is misleading the nation about the matric pass rate. She announced that 82.9% of the grade 12 class of 2023 had passed their national senior certificate exams, but said barely a word about the staggering number who had dropped out along the way.

An estimated 1.2-million children enrolled in grade 1 in 2012. Yet only 690,000 learners wrote matric exams last year, meaning more than 40% of the children the class of 2023 began school with had left the system by the time they graduated. Letting children who are battling academically quit school is a sure-fire way to boost the pass rate, but it does a deep disservice to these children and society at large.

A handful of dropouts may well pursue opportunities outside the school system, but the vast majority are in neither employment, education nor training and are destined for a lifetime of unemployment and dependence on others.

SA’s enduring literacy crisis, where only one in five grade 4 children are able to read for meaning, according to the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, is one of the key factors contributing to the high dropout rate. Yet there is still no visible effort in any of the provinces other than the Western Cape to help children catch up on the learning losses wrought by the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in extensive school closures and rotational learning for much of 2020 and 2021.

Nor has there been any real progress in getting poorly trained teachers to do a better job of helping children overcome the developmental deficits with which they start school. The dice are loaded against children who are deprived of adequate stimulation and nutrition in their early years, and the lack of state-funded early childhood education only deepens the divide.

In all the rejoicing, Motshekga also conveniently skirted the fact that passing the matric exams requires marks of just 30%40%, meaning a candidate gets the green light even if they fail to correctly answer most of the problems set before them.

The quality of the matric qualification is also thrown into doubt by the small proportion of grade 12s who achieved high enough marks in the gateway subjects of maths and science to pursue related fields at university.

Of the 262,016 candidates who wrote maths exams, only 41,273 scored 60% or above, a mere 6% of the grade 12 cohort. It is thus no wonder that so many students who enrol at universities, including a large proportion of the 1.1-million beneficiaries of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, find themselves illequipped to deal with the demands of an undergraduate degree and drop out or fail to complete their degree within three years.

While it is entirely appropriate to celebrate the achievements of the youngsters who complete high school, it is fundamentally dishonest to ignore the fact that the education system is failing so many of the nation’s weakest children.